Hold You Close

by Jessica Linden

  He pulled open the refrigeration storage unit to find rows of neatly labeled vials. Not surprisingly, none of them were labeled B37. He could cross reference every single one with the electronic files to see if there were any not legitimately accounted for, but that would take hours. And, somehow, he didn’t think it would be worth his time.

  In a glass cabinet were rows of test tubes, all clearly labeled. Another cabinet yielded pills and containers of powders.

  Nothing seemed amiss, and unfortunately, that was what Tony was expecting. The likelihood of him easily finding whatever it was he was looking for was slim.

  He moved to another section of the lab that tested insulin and other diabetes treatments. Smart move on the company’s part, considering the number of diabetics in this country was rising every year. The area was laid out similarly to the narcotics lab and was in seemingly perfect order.

  Yet another section tested marijuana. He’d skip that area for now. Nothing worth hiding would be there. Sure, marijuana was still illegal in most states, but it was easily obtained. He couldn’t see the small amount they had on hand being part of some sort of major operation.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. Maybe he was totally going off the deep end here—searching the lab after hours. The access to B37 could just be a fluke and he might be wasting his time. His gaze drifted over to Dr. Gilbert’s office. He hesitated for a moment, then walked over and tried the handle. Locked, like he expected. He’d expect nothing less of the scientist. Luckily, his badge unlocked every door in the building.

  He flipped on the lights to find the office neat and orderly. Oddly, there were no personal effects. Most of their employees had pictures of family members or comic strips or something tacked up in their cubicles. Gilbert had none of these. Other than the degrees hanging on the walls, there was no indication of the man who occupied this space.

  Tony sat down at the desk, feeling uneasy. He didn’t suspect Dr. Gilbert of any wrongdoing. There was no reason to distrust the man, and here he was about to violate his territory.

  Except it wasn’t Gilbert’s territory, not really. It was Adamo Enterprises territory.

  As Tony pulled over the first drawer, he heard the unmistakable click of the outer lab door opening. He jumped up and quickly turned off the lights, flattening his back against the wall. Carefully moving aside the blind at the window, he peered out into the room.

  And looked right at his father.

  Chapter 9

  Tony’s father strode purposefully across the room and straight to the opioids lab, disappearing inside.

  Tony closed his eyes briefly. Goddammit. There was no reason his father should be here after hours like this. No legitimate one, anyway.

  Moments later, his father came out carrying a small transport container he hadn’t had when he went in. He exited the lab, the automatic locking mechanism clicking behind him.

  The whole process had taken about a minute. He’d known exactly what he wanted.

  Tony waited another two minutes, just to be sure his father wasn’t coming back. Then he retraced his father’s steps.

  The bag his father held wasn’t cooled, so Tony didn’t bother checking the refrigerated storage. Instead, he opened the cabinet containing the pills.

  The bottles and vials had been moved. Only slightly, though. If Tony hadn’t looked at them just ten minutes before, he never would have noticed. But shit, knowing they’d been moved still didn’t tell him what had been taken.

  His father no doubt would cover his tracks so that the lab techs wouldn’t realize what was gone. Tony didn’t know enough about the workings of the lab to do that himself.

  Or a lab employee might be working with his father. Fuck. That created a new slew of complications.

  After a moment of deliberation, Tony decided to take a pill from each bottle. The loss would be discovered eventually—and for the sake of the lab security, he hoped it’d be sooner rather than later—but he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to find out what the hell was going on.

  He grabbed a set of latex gloves from the box attached to the wall and slipped them on. Then he carefully removed a pill from each bottle, storing each in its own individual bag.

  As he drove home, probably faster than he should, he kept glancing at the bags on his passenger seat containing the pills. Had he even gotten one of the pills his father had taken? For all he knew, his father had cleaned out the entire stash.

  And it looked like someone from the lab had to be involved in whatever this was. Hell, it could just be unethical practices for all Tony knew. Specimens weren’t supposed to be removed from the lab, but maybe his father got a bug up his ass to do some experimenting on his own or something. He wasn’t the gifted chemist Nonno was, but he did have some rudimentary skills.

  At best, Tony was looking at his father being in possession of unauthorized drugs. At worst—well, he didn’t know. But he sure as hell was going to find out.

  * * *

  Tony listened to Natalie’s message while sitting in his car in his parents’ driveway. She wasn’t having any luck decrypting that file. Damn. He didn’t have anyone else he trusted to work on it. He really didn’t want to have to resort to hiring someone to look at that file. That was just asking for a leak. While he wanted to get to the bottom of this, he didn’t want to smear the company’s name with mud in the process.

  He got out of the car, went to the front door, and knocked. It was his childhood home, so he could have walked right in, but he’d never been comfortable here, even when he’d lived here as a kid. So now, as an adult, he felt like a guest in the family home.

  His mother opened the door and smiled at him. “Come in.” She pulled him into a hug. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.”

  “I’m not the one who is globetrotting,” he teased. Theresa Adamo had wanderlust, and as soon as her children were out of the house, she took to traveling as much as she could. Tony secretly wondered if part of the reason was to get away from his father.

  His parents were an odd match. They didn’t have much in common, other than the fact that their parents were friends. His mother was open, caring, and giving. His father was a closed-off, selfish asshole. They’d managed to stay married for over thirty years, though. Whether or not it was a happy union, he couldn’t say.

  “I love London in September,” she said, a dreamy look in her eyes. “You should come with me sometime.”

  “Maybe,” Tony murmured. With the recent developments at Adamo Enterprises, he wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

  “Nonna is already here, and dinner’s ready. Charlene made lasagna.”

  “Charlene?” Tony questioned as they walked toward the dining room.

  “The new housekeeper,” his mother said.

  Tony didn’t comment. When he was growing up, his mother handled all the domestic duties. She’d enjoyed it. Now that she was gone so much, though, they employed a housekeeper to take care of his father’s needs. They went through housekeepers the way most people went through toothbrushes. The last one had lasted almost six months, but she finally must have gotten tired of his father’s shit.

  Hell, Tony was surprised he’d made it working alongside his father at Adamo Enterprises as long as he had without the two of them coming to blows.

  Tony leaned down to kiss Nonna’s cheek. She was seated next to his father, and he sat on the other side. His mother sat next to him.

  The dining room table was ridiculously large—it could seat sixteen with elbow room to spare—but it had been in the family for generations. When he and Marco were kids, they were forbidden from going anywhere near it and with good reason. He and his brother had broken their fair share of the family’s possessions.

  His father nodded at him by way of greeting and Tony returned the gesture. As the first course was served, Tony couldn’t help but watch his father and wonder if the man was a criminal. Unethical? Yes. Asshole? Most definitely. But what exactly was he involved in?

&nbs
p; He hoped for both his mother and Nonna’s sakes that he was wrong about his father. God knew they’d never gotten along. He hated that his inclination was to think the worst where his father was concerned, but it had yet to steer him wrong.

  “This lasagna is dry,” his father commented after taking a bite.

  “I think it’s delicious,” Nonna said, looking over at her son with an annoyed but resigned expression. Poor woman. Though she never spoke an ill word about her son, it was obvious she knew he was a class-A asshole.

  “Try the garlic bread,” his mother said, ever the peacekeeper. Having once been the only source of estrogen in a house with three testosterone-laden men, she was an expert at mitigating conflict and keeping strife at a minimum.

  “Have you heard from Marco lately?” Tony asked, remembering his conversation with Sean.

  “No. Why?” His mother’s expression was stricken, her voice panicked. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No,” Tony said, placing his hand over hers to soothe her. “I talked to Sean the other day, and he asked about him. That’s all.”

  “Of course, he doesn’t call or email,” Tony’s father said with a sneer. “He ran out on this family, so what did you expect?”

  His mother slammed her palm down on the table and the silverware rattled. “You will not talk about your son that way, you hear me?” She pointed a finger at her husband.

  His father narrowed his eyes at her but wisely said nothing, turning his attention to his dinner.

  Tony looked back and forth between them and exchanged a glance with Nonna. He knew his parents fought—they’d lived in the same house for eighteen years so it wasn’t not like they could hide every disagreement—but it was unlike his mother to lash out like that.

  Guess Tony wasn’t the only one tired of his father’s shit.

  Tony’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. Normally he wouldn’t be so rude as to check his phone at dinner, but he was waiting for a call.

  Well, two calls, actually, but he knew better than to believe Ginny would call him.

  “I’m sorry,” Tony said. “I’ve got to take this.” He went outside on the back deck and out of earshot of the dinner party before answering. “Tony Adamo.”

  “Phil Gaffney here.”

  “What did you find?”

  Phil was a friend of an old college friend, someone Tony had once met and tried to lure out of academia and into the private sector at Adamo Enterprises. No matter how much money Tony threw at him, Phil refused to leave the university. Turned out money wasn’t important—he was happy spending his days discussing theories and conducting experiments with his students.

  “I’ll send you an email with the specifics, but these are your everyday narcotics for pain. Meperidine, oxycodone, things like that.”

  Tony rubbed his brow. “Are you sure?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Yes.”

  “Sorry. Of course you’re sure.” The man was brilliant. Tony wouldn’t have trusted him with the pills otherwise.

  “What were you expecting?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony admitted.

  He didn’t know what to think about the test results, but strangely he didn’t feel relieved. Something still wasn’t sitting right. If he could only get into that damn B37 file. Then he’d know if there was something to be suspicious about or if he was a total schizoid.

  Phil’s question stuck with him—what was he expecting?

  He tucked his phone back into his pocket and returned to the table, but only the two women were there. “Where’s Dad?”

  “His office,” his mom said. “He got a call, too. Work, he said.”

  His father’s home office door slammed and his mom jumped, closing her eyes and flaring her nostrils. “Why does he have to slam the door?” she muttered.

  His father appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got to head out. Work. Don’t wait up.”

  He left before anyone could respond.

  “I never do,” his mother said, then smiled a little too brightly at Nonna and Tony. “Ready for dessert?”

  “Of course,” Tony said.

  * * *

  Tony pulled a credit card out of his wallet and used it to pop the lock open on his father’s office door. Both he and Marco had learned how to do that as children, sneaking in to liberate video games and other items that had been confiscated as punishment. Then they’d sneak back in and put them away before anyone knew they were gone.

  Those were the good old days.

  Now, Tony’s intentions were much more serious.

  The office hadn’t changed in the five or so years since he’d been in there. Same dark furniture, same shaggy carpet. There was a faint cigar-smoke odor, the result of an impressive collection of cigars in a large curio. His father had had a stash of Cuban cigars for as long as he could remember, but he didn’t begrudge his father that one indiscretion.

  If only that was his only one.

  Tony didn’t linger—he went straight to the painting that covered the wall safe. Relieved to see it was still the same one, he spun the dial until he heard the satisfying click.

  He grinned. The combination to the safe was the result of another one of his and Marco’s escapades. His father been a prick of a dad who never had any time or patience for his sons. So at first, the boys had done things simply to get attention, but later on, their goal changed to undermining and outsmarting their father. Their father might be business smart, but he had no clue when it came to teenage boys. Odd, since he used to be one. If Tony ever had teenage sons, he’d change the combination of his safe weekly. Then again, he planned to be a better father to his children so they’d actually respect him.

  Tony pulled open the safe. Tucked behind several bank bags was the transport case his father had taken from the lab. He retrieved it and removed half-a-dozen bottles of pills. There was no way to know if these were the ones that were taken from the lab.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket and he quickly slid his hand in to decline the call, looking over his shoulder. He nearly laughed at his ridiculousness. No one could have heard his phone, but he’d been a teenager the last time he’d done this. Old habits died hard.

  He opened each bottle of pills, taking one of each. Sparing just a moment, he examined them. They were definitely different than the ones he’d sent to Phil.

  This. This was what he was expecting—something shady as shit. There was no reason for his father to have experimental drugs from the Adamo lab in his personal safe.

  His father’s irrational reaction to the attempted break-in made more sense now that Tony knew he’d been hiding something in the lab. Was he worried it would be discovered or stolen?

  Tony pocketed the pills and started a cursory search of the office. Stuffed in the side drawers of the desk were outdated bank statements and dried-up ink pens. The center drawer held more of the same, including several old cell phones that should have been recycled.

  This was a waste of time. Anything that might help him was going to be either locked away or encrypted on his father’s computer. He wasn’t going to find what he was looking for here.

  Chapter 10

  Ginny listened to Tony’s message, then shamelessly played it again. Reluctantly, she deleted it. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t risk Fedor somehow hearing it. And besides that, she didn’t need the temptation. That deep voice set feelings ablaze inside her she had no business considering.

  She sat at her old vanity table in her childhood room. There were still stickers of Strawberry Shortcake stuck to the mirror and Barbie stickers all over the wood. Her mother hadn’t even minded when eight-year-old Ginny had ruined the furniture. She encouraged her daughters’ artistic expression, even if it involved sticky adhesive that ruined antique furniture.

  Ginny had moved back into her parents’ house earlier in the week. She’d have to give up the lease on her apartment soon anyway when she married Fedor, so she figured she might as w
ell do it now. Besides, she was having trouble making the rent since she hadn’t taken a salary in months. How could she when the company could barely cut checks for the other employees? If a miracle didn’t happen soon, they might be forced to do lay-offs.

  She looked in the mirror and applied another coat of lipstick. The shade was Wantonly Crimson, and not her style at all, but Fedor liked her in flashy clothes and makeup. She hated drawing attention to herself but it was a small thing and it made him happy.

  She hoped if she made enough small concessions, she wouldn’t be forced to make any big ones. Though it was naive, she clung to that hope. It was one of the only things helping her hold on.

  She barely recognized herself in the reflection staring back at her. Her eyes were done up in smoky eyeshadow with thick black eyeliner and several coats of mascara, but even all that makeup couldn’t hide the dead look in them. Was this what it was coming to already? When would it end? She’d already compromised so much and she hadn’t even sealed the deal yet.

  Her lower lip quivered and tears filled her eyes. She pushed back from the counter, keeping her head tilted back to stop the tears from falling. She didn’t have time to patch up her makeup.

  She gripped her phone in her hand, squeezing so hard the case left indentations on her fingers. Tony had said to call anytime for any reason. How she wanted to take him up on that offer, to throw feminism to the wind and ask him to save her from this mess. To let him be her knight in shining armor.

  Instead, that was the role she was playing for her family, and they didn’t even realize it.

  Her mom knocked on the nearly shut door and Ginny gestured for her to come in.

  Her mom was perfectly suited for her father—they were both artistic dreamers. However, unlike her father, her mother hadn’t been expected to take over the family business. Instead she spent her days painting and sold her art at a local gallery downtown.